The Marvel Universe: Phase One: Standing Alone
by Joe Bloghead
Summary: The Marvel Universe is a complex place, filled with mutants, engineered supersoldiers, and secret conspiracies. It's most dangerous parts can be tough to survive, far harder to dominate, but there are a few who rise to the challenge. It can be difficult to tell the difference between great opportunity and great burden, especially when they force the bearer to stand alone...
1. Peter Parker vs Mr Edwards

In Forest Hills, Queens, New York, halfway between the La Guardia and JFK airports, a teenage student was staring through a classroom window. Peter Benjamin Parker, like many teenagers before him, was bored by his science lesson. Instead he stared out across the patch of grass, watching the way the birds flew in the wind, the shape their wings took to propel them upwards. Peter wasn't knowledgeable enough to recognise the breed of birds – insects were more his area of interest. But there was enough in the physics of the bird movements to maintain his fascination.

Trees sat just beyond the fences that marked the edge of the school property, and several of the flock were already waiting. One by one, the flying birds reached their destination, but one continued to struggle against the gusts. Instead it landed – though Peter was too far distant to see the pain on its face, he had enough empathy to imagine it.

* * *

"Parker!"

His teacher's voice drew him back into the room.

"Is there any chance of you joining us in the room, Mister Parker?"

Peter looked around, and realised in discomfort that attention was focused on him. Mr Edwards was stood only a few feet away, looking into him with stern, disapproving eyes, his stiff, unsmiling lips holding an even deeper sense of disapproval than normal.

"I've completed the work, sir."

"How can you have finished? I've not told you how yet."

The middle-aged teacher's tone was certain, clear, and superior.

"My Uncle Ben has taught me all of this, sir. I've been doing experiments like this with him for years."

Peter's tone was pleading, full of doubt.

"Oh? What PhD does your uncle have?"

As embarrassing as the attention of the classroom was, the implied insult to his uncle was the first thing Mr Edwards had said that made Peter angry. How dare he just blindly assume that Uncle Ben – a man Mr Edwards never met – didn't know what he was doing?

"We went through the textbooks sir, and several respected pop science books." Though he could hear the giggles of his classmates, Peter's eyes were locked on his interrogator - he was determined to show his teacher the appropriate respect. "I recognise the next part of the process, sir."

"So you think you're so smart that you can disrupt my lesson do you, Parker?"

That was a blatant distortion of what he'd been doing. Bored by an assignment that was beneath his ability, he worked quickly through the assignment and avoided drawing attention to himself.

As Peter felt his cheeks redden, he looked round the room. His classmates' faces were an equal mix of sympathy and amusement. Gwen Stacey winced as their eyes locked; Harry Osborn smirked – he was clearly enjoying the show.

"You can check my answers if you want, sir?"

Peter picked his notebook, and earnestly, desperately, held it upwards towards his tormentor.

Mr Edwards looked him square in the face, pursing his lips for a noticeable period of time before speaking.

"I don't have time to single you out for special attention – in case you hadn't noticed, I've a class of over thirty students to teach."

As he spoke, Mr Edwards turned away, no longer paying Peter that special attention.

"You're a lazy smartass Parker, and you'll never amount to anything."


	2. Sgt Nick Fury vs The Recruiting Agent

Nick Fury ran. He was on leave from the US army, and was moving his muscular body through the suburban streets at a strong but steady rate. He was moving at little more than a jog, a speed he felt like he could keep up more or less indefinitely.

He received an ugly look from a middle aged man casually watering his front lawn. Even after his service in Korea, there were plenty in this kind of serene suburban setting who were intent on making a black man feel unwelcome.

Fury was wearing his neatly pressed running kit, its khaki green making clear to the most casual observer that he served his country, if nothing more.

Fury ran directly in front of the gardener's lawn, half expecting to be sprayed as he did, but refusing to alter his course to accommodate a bigot. He avoided eye contact, despite being halfway tempted to pick a fight.

* * *

A block or two further, Fury became certain of what he was seeing. A smart black car was slowly following him. It had been for a few minutes now - when he first spotted it, he thought it may be a coincidence. But the car had now followed him on a couple of sudden turns, moving much more slowly than it was capable of.

Not slowing down, Fury took in the car's path in his peripheral vision, and considered his options. He turned a corner where a couple of pine trees blocked the view to the street he'd just left. As soon as Fury calculated that he'd be invisible to the driver of the car he accelerated, running flat out down the new street. He ducked into an alley – one he knew connected into another. Fury took a moment to regain his composure, clinging close to the wall as he calmed his sweat-drenched body, and looking out.

His breath restored, Fury left his hiding hole. The alley broke out right next to a grocery store - an obvious place for any urban hunter. Fury turned in the opposite direction, jogging back in the general direction he had just run.

It wasn't long before he spotted the car again, appearing a few blocks to Fury's left. This time there was nowhere to hide, just suburban gardens, with not so much as a single civilian in this area. Without missing a beat, Fury began sprinting in the opposite direction, pumping his muscular frame as fast as it would go, the sweat rolling down his face as he did. He could hear the car screeching after him. Fury pushed the muscles in his legs harder and harder as he passed the point from euphoria back into agony, but it was in vain – the car quickly overtook him, coming to a halt at the end of the block.

Fury halted, doubled up in pain as he thought through his options. He watched helplessly as the driver's door opened, and a tall, muscular middle-aged soldier stepped out. Beneath his tidy, well-cropped hair, the driver smiled broadly, boyishly.

"Well, Fury, that was much easier than I expected. I expected much more of a challenge catching you!"

* * *

Sitting in the passenger seat and panting, Fury used a towel to wipe the sweat from his face, the rubbed it across his short, military standard hair.

"I expected you to be able to put up more of a challenge Nick," the driver said, never taking his attention from the road. "An athletic young man like you – I hope you've not let yourself get rusty these past few weeks?"

Fury smirked, becoming a man totally at ease.

"Hell, no. Have you thought that the fact you used to do this with Captain Rogers might mean you're judging me on too steep a curve?"

"You never seemed like a man to make excuses, soldier."

The pair broke into laughter, the comfortable, understated laughter of men who'd put their lives in each other's hands, who trusted each other totally.

James Buchanan-Barnes had been Fury's commanding officer, and a legend for his actions in World War Two. The men were close – seeing that Fury's talents were wasted because of racial assumptions, the Major insisted that he be transferred under his command, and had given him opportunities he would get nowhere else. Fury idolised the man known as Bucky to an extent that was rare even for this legend. But that didn't prevent him giving a bit of cheek back.

"I'll excel at evasion training in time. It's going to take time for me to reach the standards of America's greatest supersoldier, that's all."

Fury didn't believe the more far-fetched stories about 'Captain America', but his record stood for itself – he had clearly been quite a man.

Buchanan-Barnes smiled.

"I've got an offer for you Fury. You can follow me out of the army, see things you had no idea of."

This struck Fury, who turned his attention fully towards his superior.

"Who are you working for?"

The boyish smile appeared again.

"They don't officially exist. A top secret government organisation called SHIELD."


	3. Dr Bruce Banner vs The Nuclear Meltdown

"Everybody out!"

Doctor Bruce Banner looked around to make sure everyone was on their way towards the door, then returned his attention towards the dials.

Pressure was way too high, but there was still enough time to release the appropriate coolant fluid, if he moved quickly enough...

Sweat poured out of him, staining his creased white shirt - he wasn't sure how much it was because of the heat, or if the pressure was getting to him.

The control bunker was cramped, with a series of large grey consoles he had to move between. Worse, as they'd retrofitted an older building, trying to get the equipment in any which way, many of the consoles were located at odd corners to each other. It had made the bunker a nightmare to run - having to move through tight gaps and ask half a dozen people to squeeze out of the way just to check up on someone stationed over at the other side of the bunker.

The indicator on a circular dial was reaching into very dangerous territory - well into the light red that was technically bad, approaching the dark red that meant disaster was imminent.

Bruce had never thought of himself as being great under pressure. Sure, he'd been in charge of the Subatomic Energy research team at Los Diablos these past few months, but he was a far more talented theoretician than he was an administrator or a boss. Having to balance different responsibilities against each other always made him nervous, and he was particularly awful at keeping General Ross off his team's back.

But now, he had only minutes to prevent the reactor completely overheating, filling the entire base with the gamma rays they'd been studying at a controlled distance. There were safety protocols of course, people were being evacuated, but chances were that some lives at least were in his hands...

Something just moved.

Bruce swore he could just see something move out of the corner of his eye. Rats and various desert creatures had worked their way in, but it looked like a person.

"Hello?"

A young man appeared.

"Ricky."

Bruce was relieved and annoyed to see the junior researcher.

"What are you doing here? I ordered everyone out."

"I just... I wanted to help..."

"No. The best you can do is get as far away as possible. This isn't a job that needs a lot of manpower, I just need to think."

Bruce looked into the young man's child-like, innocent face. He barely seemed to have even started puberty. He had neither visible stumps of decapitated facial hairs, nor the weariness that comes from being forced to make ideological compromises to pay the rent.

He placed a hand tightly against the young man's arm.

"Just make sure you get back to your family. I'll follow you as soon as it's safe."

Ricky nodded awkwardly, and moved slowly towards the door as soon as Bruce removed his hand.

"Run!"

He stumbled towards the door at first, then, from the hallway, Bruce could hear him pick up speed, his shoes clattering against the tiles. He'd make it to the stairs back to the surface level in no time.

Ricky Jones was still a baby – although most of his team was under forty, Ricky was too young to remember the Moon landing, and wasn't even alive when Kennedy was shot. Bruce wondered when exactly it was he got old.

Left alone to think, Doctor Banner visualised a dozen different interlinked systems in his mind, moving from console to console. The army had not, despite his requests, provided the funding to design a console capable of displaying all the most important information in one place.

Quickly he was able to put together a mental map of what needed to be done - how to lock away the radiation, how to prevent the unstable material from breaking down further at their base levels, what needed to be done to counter the side-effects of the first two operations...

The minutes seemed to fly past in a blur, which was somehow simultaneously never-ending. Bruce Banner was so deeply in the zone that the world outside the bunker disappeared entirely from his conscious mind.

That was it. Feeling like he had completed his complex task, Bruce let himself go, releasing the effort of will that kept him moving. Seeing the dials drop, he wiped his forehead with a sleeve, and sunk down to one knee. A smile grew to fill his sweat-drenched face - he even let out a little laugh as he climbed to his feet. He looked at himself – he looked awful, the torso of his shirt transparent with sweat. He didn't exactly have the body to pull off that look.

Then a rumble built quickly from behind him. Turning in horror, Doctor Bruce Banner was propelled to the floor.


	4. Peter Parker vs The Education System

"I'm sorry Mister Parker, but there's nothing more we can do."

"The hell there isn't!"

Peter Parker squirmed in the principal's office, as his head teacher and uncle fought over his future. The school day had drawn to a close, and there was little light making its way through the windows. Shadows fell across the principal's wooden desk and cheap lamp stand.

"Mister Parker, I appreciate you feel strongly –"

"This isn't about my feelings. Peter's above the average ability of your students – I get that you've got limited budgets. But the least I'd expect – the absolute least – is that his teachers aren't working to actively discourage his development!"

Uncle Ben was furious – his face seemed to glow red. There was an intensity to his face and he seemed to be breathing faster than normal. His eyes were locked on Mr McCarthy with that familiar look that told Peter – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that his great-uncle must have been a bold soldier back at his peak.

Mr McCarthy gathered himself – though he was only a few years younger than Uncle Ben, and scolded his students on a daily basis, he now had the bearing of a teenager who'd forgotten his homework.

"Mister Parker, no-one's trying to undermine Peter's education. We all want what's best –"

"Don't give me that crap. You think I was born yesterday?"

Mr McCarthy stopped in his tracks, taken aback by the interruption. There was fear in his eyes as he licked his lips nervously.

"_I don't think there's a conspiracy against Peter._" Ben spat the words out contemptuously, enraged by the straw-man argument McCarthy was trying to put forward. "But if Edwards can't tell the difference between a disruptive student and one who gets what they're being taught before it's spelled out for them, maybe he's not fit to teach in a public school!"

Mr McCarthy was firmly on the defensive now. He looked around the room, as if somewhere the perfect response had been written down, waiting for his eyes to lock onto it.

"Surely, it's a teacher's job to challenge all their students, and to encourage them to love their subject, right?"

Mr McCarthy seemed nervous about accepting this apparent offer of truce.

"I'd… I'd agree with that."

He seemed to feel this may be a trap.

"I understand it's going to be difficult to challenge a student of Peter's capabilities. But you know what teenagers are like – knocking anyone with a bit of intellectual ability. We don't want teachers to do the same, do we?"

From that point, the discussion became much more co-operative. At times, Peter even felt relaxed and comfortable.

* * *

"I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable in there."

Uncle Ben spoke without taking his eyes off the road.

"No, it's fine," Peter mumbled, his body hunched over, his hands fumbling nervously with each other.

"Don't do that," Uncle Ben instructed.

Peter jerked upward.

"Do what?"

"Pretend you're fine when you're not. It's not healthy to keep secrets bottled up."

Peter nodded, and mumbled an apology, looking down into his lap.

"There's something I've been thinking about for a while," said Ben, breaking the silence. "You're ahead of all your science class at school, and god knows you're beyond anything I can teach you."

With the car going nowhere in New York traffic, Uncle Ben turned to look Peter in the eye, his warm smile making his eyes twinkle.

"Now's as good a time as any to tell you. I've been in touch with New York University for a while, trying to arrange something with them. How would you be interested in doing some work in their genetics lab after school?"

Peter felt himself light up at the suggestion. Spending time getting practical experience at NYU? He'd been reading scientific journals for years, including a few very interesting ones written by Professor Octavius, a guest lecturer at NYU. He was without doubt the greatest robotics mind this side of Stark Industries' confidentiality clauses.

"I've passed on your grades, and some of our private work. There's a doctor in the genetics lab, does studies mutating animals into new and stronger forms. He seemed sceptical that you're as smart as I claimed, but he wants to meet you just in case. You interested?"

There was only one possible response to that.

"Of course!"

"Good."

Uncle Ben returned his focus to the road, smiling broadly as the car began to move once more.

"His name's Curt Connors, he wants to meet you on Wednesday."


	5. Sgt Nick Fury vs The Recruitment Process

Sergeant Fury flashed his badge, and the soldier nodded to his colleague, who raised the barrier.  
Driving the jeep through onto the base, he could tell by the way the pair looked at him that he wasn't welcome.  
_Just try and take a swing at me_, Fury thought. _I'd love the chance to see just how many bones I can break._

* * *

"It's a lot smaller than I imagined. Quiet as well."  
Buchanan-Barnes laughed as the wind blew in the pair's faces.  
The staff is very minimalist. At least at first glance."  
"Do you even have planes here? I've driven the full way across Lockmartin, I've not seen a single god-damn plane. And the hangars that were open looked empty."  
Fury's superior smiled broadly as they walked. Buchanan-Barnes had made his name as a youngster, and he still had the boyish looks and sense of impishness that the famous photographs had recorded in his time serving under Captain Rogers.  
"Officially, Lockmartin is semi-operative. Anyone at ground level in the Army or Air Force will be told that there's nothing going on here, that we keep things running just in case we need additional capacity at some point in the future, or if a plane needs to make an emergency landing."  
"I get the sense that there's more than the official word?"  
"You always were a sharp one, Fury."  
Fury was beginning to tire of his superior's hints. It reminded him of the stupid shell games a colleague in Korea practiced - and didn't practice very well. It was blatantly obvious which of the three cups the ball was under almost every time, but he carried on like he had a trick up his sleeve, that he was about to expose the watcher's naiveté. He never did.

For almost any other man, Fury would have responded with threats of physical violence, or at least walked out, long before reaching this point. He could feel his muscular arms twitching, dying to give in to his instincts.

But the Sergeant respected Buchanan-Barnes enough to give him more faith than he would grant any other man. Not to mention that he felt personally indebted to his superior. Fury forced the cheeriest tone he could find within himself.  
"So, where are we going, sir?"

Hearing himself speak, even that sounded irritated and impatient. Deception was never his forte.  
The pair were walking across the airfield between the canteen and a closed hangar. Fury had been sat alone with a coffee - some of the rednecks a table over were looking at him as if he were a Martian. Over the years he'd developed a thick skin, but he still found it exhausting to hold the fire within him, particularly given that he didn't know if the trip here was worthwhile.  
"Call me Bucky. I'm not with the army anymore, so I'm not your superior. For the moment at least."  
"Where are we going, Bucky?"  
After speaking, Fury realised there was power, even anger evident in his tone. Even from a man he respected as much as the former Major Buchanan-Barnes, he was beginning to tire of the mystery. The Major - 'Special Director' now - wore a uniform Fury wasn't familiar with. It was predominantly navy blue, with a light yellow belt and shoulder strap.  
"One thing you'll need to learn working with SHIELD, is to think beyond everything you knew previously. The true nature of the world around us is mind-blowing, almost limitless."  
Fury wasn't sure if he rolled his eyes, but he did look away. He was almost ready to tell him, to hell with your secret organisation and cryptic insinuations. I'm a soldier, I deal with solid facts, things I can get my head around and understand.

Being an army soldier in peacetime wouldn't be too bad - and Fury had the money set aside to become a private citizen again, if need be. He could grow his hair, shave it all off – maybe even grow a goatee.  
They reached the hangar. As with all the others, there was a door, as large as on any front door to a house or barracks, in the centre. On this hangar, the door was guarded by two men in SHIELD uniforms, but with orange belts and straps. They saluted to Buchanan-Barnes, and stepped to each side, allowing him to open the door.  
Holding the door ajar before he entered, Bucky turned towards his former subordinate, smiling a broad, joyously mischievous smile.  
"You're about to go through the looking glass Fury."  
Fury hesitated outside a second, maybe even two - certainly longer than he was supposed to - silently cursing his superior.  
When he followed the Special Director in, he was taken aback by what he saw. Towering above him, filling most of the hangar, was... a ship? A plane? The front section was yellow, with a red shape at its fore tip that looked like a glimmering star. Or maybe it was supposed to represent an explosion? Stepping to the side, the main body of this thing was grey. Fury could see no sign of wings or an engine. Maybe a large submarine, but then why would it be so far inland? And how would it be moved out of the hangar?  
Fury walked around, totally indifferent and unaware of the many SHIELD staff around him. Though every instinct he'd ever picked up told him it was impossible, the best explanation he could think of was that this was some form of alien spaceship.


	6. Dr Bruce Banner vs Gamma Radiation

The pain was overwhelming - Banner felt himself thrashing around involuntarily as the soldiers moved the roller stretcher through the corridors. Each of the four were wearing Hazmat suits, two of them stood at either end of the stretcher, one ensuring the doors were opened ahead of them, another supervising his movement.  
Though he was still lucid enough to take in most of what was happening around him, his body raged against his control. The pain in his stomach was intense, the back of his neck felt as if it was engulfed in flames, and spasms of agony fired up his legs again and again.  
"Lie still Doctor Banner. You don't want to roll off the stretcher."  
The voice of the soldier, assertive but gentle, was muffled by the suit, but Bruce could still understand his instructions. He felt as if there was a new source of pain forming in every moment. Looking at the back of his left hand, he was struck by how widespread the erythema was. The top layers of his skin were burnt away in large sections across his hand, inspiring a sense of panic at how bad it may be elsewhere. There were large blisters between his index and middle finger and on the palm of his right hand. Looking at them, he became aware of sensations he hadn't been aware of before. The pain was from everywhere. His lower jaw suddenly clenched, as Bruce was unable to ignore the burning sensation from inside his mouth. Moving his tongue along the inside, his mouth was dry and rough.  
He felt a tear running down his cheek. It felt warm, but he couldn't tell how far it ran. Had it been halted by some unseen blistering on his face? Bruce panicked. How badly was his scarring? Would he ever recover?  
"Doctor Banner."  
The voice was still firm, and compassionate. But there was a sense of irritation that was new.  
"Listen to me, Doctor Banner. We're taking you to the infirmary. But if you keep on squirming, you may fall off the stretcher. You've got to try and stay still."  
The corridor rushed past. Bruce had walked the corridors of Los Diablos for months, but now they were little more than a blur. The walls looked white, rather than their more subtle eggshell shade, and the light through the windows was blinding. No matter how hard he tried, Bruce couldn't help but squirm.  
How bad were his burns? Was there any chance of him getting out of this alive? What about the others - how widespread was the explosion?  
Banner's query came out as an indecipherable mumble.  
"Try not to talk Doctor Banner. Your body's been damaged, and that includes your vocal chords."  
Banner needed to know. If he simplified his statement, then maybe he could make himself understood.  
"Others."  
His pronunciation was far from his crisp and clear norm, his 'th' sounded more like an 'f', or even a 'v'. But it should be clear enough.  
"They're in the infirmary too. Don't worry, we were prepared for this kind of emergency."  
How many of his close colleagues and friends were affected?


	7. Sgt Nick Fury vs The Sense of Disbelief

Fury couldn't believe what he was seeing. He looked up and down the craft, trying to find wings, or at least some form of jet engine. If it was there, he couldn't see it. It may be that it was some sort of power generator, maybe a nuclear core of some sort? But his heart still said that this was some sort of ship. The yellow covering towards the front was emblazoned with what could be a military symbol (his gut told him that it was meant to be a twinkling or exploding star). This thinned to minimal yellow rails along the top, and on the bottom left and right. The main body of the ship looked more practical – some sort of tubing. It was unlikely to be piping in the sense that he'd worked with, but the principle was probably the same, transferring different types of energy around different parts of the craft. The colourful exterior was probably intended to make an impression – probably not for something as practical as a source of power.

"Nick!"

Snapped out of his trance, he looked towards his former superior, standing behind one of two rails running perpendicular in the back corner of the hangar, fencing Buchanan-Barnes into a small, secure area. Fury was beckoned towards him.

As he joined Buchanan-Barnes behind the rail, the older man pressed a button on his belt, and a square of the floor, extending just beyond the rail in each direction, descended.

Fury wasn't the least bit surprised any more.

Lights came on in what Fury could only think to describe as the basement, a room that looked exactly the same size as the hangar. It seemed logical that this would allow the ship to be moved underground.

A door was already open behind them. Fury craned his neck downwards – there were no windows in the corridor, of course, but the walls were cleanly metallic, with bright fluorescent lights.

* * *

Fury and Bucky sat in a spartan meeting room, decorated only by a basic wooden table and a handful of chairs. There was a photograph of the president on the wall, and a potted plant nearby.

"There's no way humans built that thing."

"Good observation. Unfortunately, no human seems to have been able to fly it either."

Fury shook his head, struggling to take all this in. Buchanan-Barnes grinned.

His hair was tidy, if longer than military grade, and he had a strong, chiselled but professional face. He was evidently having fun playing with his protégé, but there was plentiful evidence of his military discipline.

"Is there more to this place?"

"Well, if you go back into the corridor, and walk another two hundred yards," He pointed back towards the corridor, further along than they had come, "you'll reach reception."

Fury sat perfectly still, not just biting his lip but furiously chewing it. He held his hands on the table in front of him, the model of a good army officer.

His head was spinning – mentally he wasn't really here. A thought crossed his head – maybe he was still in Korea, and this was some form of advanced interrogation, designed to throw him off balance so he could be tricked into revealing military secrets. Given the bizarre things he'd just seen, it was the fact that he had little to reveal that convinced him this wasn't the case.

Buchanan-Barnes held a single index finger to his ear, and listened intently to something that Fury couldn't hear.

"Affirmative."

He stood, and motioned for Fury to do the same. "They're ready for us."

Something in Fury snapped – who exactly was ready for them? And to what purpose?

"How about you give me some answers before we go further? How do you know I want to sign up to SHIELD?"

Patiently and calmly, Buchanan-Barnes gave his matter-of-fact reply.

"Because you want to be the best. Trust me, no other job you could possibly take would challenge you in as many ways as this one will."


	8. Dr Bruce Banner vs The Sense of Shame

Bruce found opening his eyes painful. He found everything painful – the agony shot across his body, and he had thrown up several times, embarrassing himself when a nurse had to take away the bedside containers.

But his eyes were worse – his eyelids seemed to stick together.

Bruce's hands and torso were covered in burns, too horrible for him to bear looking at. Having touched a hand to his face at one point, feeling the sensitivity of a deep layer of skin that was never meant to be exposed to the touch, he came to the conclusion that it was a bad idea to do so again.

Even Doctor Sterns, a detached and sarcastic medic who could normally be relied on not to take anything too seriously, had shown an untypical amount of concern.

Much of Bruce's body had been bandaged in the hours since his retrieval, but his face was still exposed. He hadn't yet seen his new reflection – he felt shame and sympathy, thinking about what Betty had to look at.

But she was smiling, just as warmly as ever. The doctors and nurses had let their masks of professionalism slip once or twice, their reactions revealing how repulsive they found it to look at him. There was nothing of that from Betty.

"I'm sorry I couldn't see you sooner. I came as soon as the doctors let me."

Betty took his hand, bandaged tightly, in hers. She held it very softly, touching the outside fingers on both sides of his hand with one of her own hands. Though this increased his pain (slightly but noticeably) Bruce smiled. Having her near made the rest easier to bear.

She was a gentle, kind, slightly shy soul – a far cry from her father.

* * *

Elizabeth Ross had arranged for a lengthy visit to Los Diablos Research Base when it was first being established, apparently to re-establish contact with her workaholic father. Tensions were high in those days, as General Ross tried to force everyone to their limits of performance, in order to meet unreasonable deadlines from the Pentagon.

Though there for her own and her father's benefit, Betty provided a kind and sympathetic word to those feeling the strain. She set up what was initially a library, and grew into a relaxation and entertainment centre, gaining responsibility for the morale of Base personnel long before it became her salaried position.

Betty was the most timid, subdued person on the Base (with the possible exception only of Bruce) but the only one with the courage to stand up to General Ross in his foulest tempers.

Just about everyone appreciated Betty's presence, but none more than Bruce, the Nobel winning genius behind the new theory of energy production, the theory that had brought them all to the base.

* * *

Looking into her soft, delicate face, Bruce could feel his heart breaking. He knew the future that was ahead of him – months of treatments, probably years, a life half lived in hospital beds, and not looking quite human ever again. Of course Betty wouldn't walk away, but how could inflict all of that on the woman he loved?


	9. Peter Parker & Doc Connors

The meeting had gone spectacularly well. Peter was incredibly nervous at the beginning, being brief and courteous in reply to all of Doctor Connors' questions. The importance of impressing his potential mentor was foremost in his mind. (Avoiding drawing attention to the doctor's missing right arm was close behind.)

Peter certainly wasn't the type to point and laugh, but as a scientist, it was in his nature to observe and analyse. He looked at the arm on the right hand side of Doctor Connors' coat, doubled over on itself and sealed shut with a safety pin. Connors was lacking at least part of his arm, and it seemed like it wasn't just cut off at the elbow.

Thalidomide? A lab accident?

The discussion was relatively superficial at first, with Connors asking him questions hardly more advanced than those Mr Edwards would ask. Peter was actually starting to wonder if Connors was all he was cracked up to be – especially when he misquoted Doctor Xavier's _Mutations and The Future of Evolution, _in such a way that distorted it's central arguments. Peter couldn't let that slide, and timidly, corrected Connors. Connors argued back, but Peter stood his ground. Connors smiled, looking over Peter – he seemed to re-examine the teenager. He then threw difficult questions at him, and the pair launched into a series of enthusiastic debates about the future of genetics. Connors believed that not only was evolution happening within a single lifetime, but it could be controlled.

Though Connors was a subdued and controlled personality, with a serious military mind, there was an enthusiasm for the joy of science that ignited the same in Peter, lighting it brighter than it had ever been lit before. It was the kind of debate Peter had always wanted to have but never been able to.

* * *

Peter's first three weeks working with Doctor Connors had flown by. Though his work was more supportive than scientific, the chance to ask questions thrilled him. Connors left notes scribbled in various pads all around the lab – sketches of the fruit flies he'd experimented with, notes of when a genetic trait had been successfully passed on, and when it couldn't be seen in the next generation.

He'd found that Connors had the eccentric habit of leaving his pads wherever he was when he finished writing, and that he merely opened the nearest he could find to a blank page before jotting down his observations. The lack of light in the laboratory didn't help when a pad had to be tracked down, nor did the fact that he tended to take at least one with him to his personal office.

Still, the whole experience thrilled and energised Peter. He talked about little but genetics when he finally got home to a late supper with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. He even managed to convince Gwen and Harry that, from some perspectives, Connors' work was sort of interesting.

* * *

"There've been more complex creatures going through the gene therapy," said Connors, not looking up from his microscope. "They should be ready for laboratory observation from next week. How about you start taking down notes of your own, really get involved in the scientific process?"

Peter was stunned, he didn't know what to say. After the shock wore off, the first thing to enter his mind was worry – what if he missed something obvious, and ruined Connors' work in the process?

The scientist – middle-aged, but with a heavy look constantly in his eyes – seemed to be able to read Peter's mind.

"I'll be over your shoulder, making my own notes. It's more of a learning experience for you, and so I can see what you're capable of."

Peter felt a little disappointed that he wasn't having responsibility thrust on him as quickly as he'd thought. But this evaporated quickly, leaving him with a sense of relief – and a determination to make the best of this, lesser opportunity.

"That'd be great." The realisation of the scale of the opportunity sank in. "That'd be fantastic!"

"Well then – mice or spiders, which would you prefer?"

For Peter, there could only be one answer. He grinned boyishly at the very thought of it.

"The spiders."


	10. Sgt Nick Fury vs SHIELD

Fury reluctantly followed his former commanding officer to the end of the corridor. As he'd suspected when looking on from a distance, there was nothing there - just a metallic wall, every bit as solid and uninterrupted as any other part of the corridor, save the waiting room.  
Buchanan-Barnes placed his right palm flat against one part of the wall, and his left eye against another.  
"It takes a while to memorise where the scanners are, but you'll pick it up."  
Doors clicked back half an inch from the apparently solid wall, and parted, revealing a young woman sat behind a desk. She was wearing the same vibrant navy blue SHIELD uniform, but with a dull brown sash.  
"Good afternoon sir. The remainder of the new agents are waiting for you - the presentation's ready to go."  
She was young, with a warm smile. Her desk was large, with both it and the seated area raised - reaching almost a full half circle around her, with just enough space for her to step down. Behind the top section of the desk, Fury could see several files - a handful of which the secretary picked out and handed over to Buchanan-Barnes. He headed over to two sets of lifts to her left. Fury followed, because he wasn't sure what else to do as much as anything else.

* * *

Three SHIELD employees were sat obediently facing towards a screen, with another stood beside a projector. Buchanan-Barnes indicated the empty seat, and Fury took it.  
"Gentlemen, welcome to your first day of Agent training."

He took the files from under his arm, handing them to the projector operator (whose sash was a light orange, possibly peach). Buchanan-Barnes positioned himself beside the screen.  
"You'll be SHIELD's newest field agents, part of an elite that very few know about, and fewer still are invited to join. It's believed that our area of expertise will become increasingly important in the next few decades - you will form the frontline for our nation's next great conflict."  
Fury couldn't help but roll his eyes. He wanted to burst out of the room and return to the surface, to a world where things made sense. But looking across at his fellow inductees - two wearing grey sashes above their blue uniforms, one wearing brown - they seemed to be lapping it up. They seemed excited.  
"We'll start by testing your deductive powers," Buchanan-Barnes announced. Any trace of humour was now gone from his face - he was a strict, focused teacher. "Sergeant Fury - you've been told the least. What have you observed?"  
All five of the SHIELD agents looked towards him, with the brown-sashed and one of the grey-sashed inductees smirking. He wasn't sure if it was racism or condescension towards outsiders, but Fury was clearly expected to embarrass himself.  
Put on the spot like this, some men could wilt. Fury's objection was simpler - he was no-one's performing monkey.  
"You're examining some form of technology, way beyond anything I've seen before, and I've visited some of the Army's top Arr and Dee projects. I'd assume it's captured, but it looks way beyond what I've heard the Ruskies have. The least unbelievable option is that it's an alien spaceship."  
Buchanan-Barnes' face was stiff. The brown-sashed inductee seemed mildly impressed.  
"I'm not entirely convinced you are government employees - you could be civilians, or even Russian spies who've taken over a former military base, as far as I can tell." He paused. "But you're clearly well-financed. That, and the Major's presence, means I'm tempted to give you the benefit of the doubt."  
Fury paused again, to think methodically.  
"Blue is your standard uniform, with the overwear denoting rank or department. You're wearing bold, bright colours, unusual for a secret organisation. Maybe you're intending to come out in the open soon, and a uniform redesign is part of it, to appear colourful and trustworthy? Or it could be that your superiors haven't thought things through." He paused to think. He could feel his heart beating faster, his well-defined muscles moving in reaction to the extra adrenalin. "My guess is that brown sashes mean administrators, grey means technicians."  
Fury was speaking strongly, with confidence and anger - his powerful chest projecting his voice with the volume of an experienced drill sergeant making sure a new recruit five rows back couldn't ignore him. He was tired of being messed around, and didn't care who knew.

"You don't see much frontline combat, _I'm sure of that much._" He spoke with contempt - an experienced frontliner looking down on those in the intelligence division (probably) who were all theory. A slight smile was spreading across the face of Buchanan-Barnes.  
"And there's an unofficial floor between sub-levels 2 and 3. The lift took twice as long to travel that distance as between the other floors."  
This was met by laughter from the brown-sashed recruit, a loud, momentary burst of amusement at his ridiculous suggestion. The glare he got from the grey-sashed recruits confirmed that Fury was right.  
"I'd assume that the... yellow thing… was flown here by aircraft carrier, it must have been in one of the biggest they US has. There's no way you'd have been able to move it by road without being seen. Either it landed nearby, or you've borrowed resources to move it here. You've got connections. And the symbol at its front is obviously meant to make an impact. Either it's branding for a commercial enterprise, or it's meant to strike fear into their enemies."  
Fury thought over the minutiae of details he'd seen, wondering what else he could deduce. One final thought came to him.  
"There's a blond technician in the hangar, with her hair in a ponytail halfway down her back."  
Buchanan-Barnes creased his brow, his face stiffening.  
"She seemed to be going through the motions of reading her instruments. Either she's way out of her depth, or you've got an infiltrator."


	11. Peter Parker & The Scientific Process

Peter could barely contain his excitement. He'd seen the spiders in passing previously, but hadn't been allowed too much time to sit and watch them. Doctor Connors had four others supporting him, each of them a student in one of his Genetics classes, all older and more obviously qualified than Peter.  
But Connors had shown faith in him, in that near silent manner of his. The geneticist's face was generally a mask, giving away little. But he had inquired about Peter's plans after high school. When Peter replied that he wouldn't be able to afford the fees charged by NYU, Connors offered to put his name forward for a scholarship.  
"I'm not doing it as a favour," he had passively replied. "You've a sharp mind, and you've done the menial tasks without complaint. The scientific community needs to get people like you access to training."  
His face was frozen in seriousness even at this moment. There was none of the warm, paternal pride of Uncle Ben, or the kind of enjoyment that he had seen Harry's father, Norman Osborn, display when he endowed others with his philanthropy. Instead, Doc Connors had made what he considered to be a factual observation, and that was all there was to it.

* * *

Peter could not be passive in the same way. In fact, during the day, he'd thought of little but the spiders.  
Novum aranea, Connors had called them – 'new spiders' in Latin. Created by combining the genes of existing spiders, to create an entirely new breed. It seemed a remarkable achievement to Peter (and speaking to others, it seemed that it was) but Connors insisted that it was only a minor achievement, a step to something better. Dogs crossbreed and expand the genetic possibilities all the time, he'd insisted. The aim of his project was to take control of the process of evolution, which meant understanding which genes would produce which traits, to a greater extent than his earliest attempt.  
The job now, for Connors and his interns, was to track fully which traits the animals (spiders, rats and mice) had, as individuals and as species.

* * *

Peter sat, looking through the glass cage. There were six spiders - three male, and three female, each of them about big enough to fill his palm. Though the males, in general, were larger than the females, there wasn't a huge difference. In fact, one of the males was noticeably smaller than the other two, smaller even than two of the females. The smallest male (Peter quickly nicknamed it 'Tiny', much more memorable than Connors' name, SPM001-02) was often bullied by the others. They took away food Tiny had gotten to first, as well as pushing him from the exercise wheel. Peter thought of Billy Baker, several years older than him, who'd bullied him mercilessly when he first started high school. Many things were different for these spiders - not least the fact that they had no genetic parents - but some truths were universal.

* * *

In time, Peter became more and familiar with his subjects. He could recognise each of the spiders without needing to refer back to the notebook. He bought a cheap, disposable camera to photograph each - he wasn't much of an artist, and thought this would be an easier way to keep track of any changes over time.  
They were quite beautiful - once you overlooked their row of eyes, with pincers in front. The body itself really was stunning. A vibrant red and blue, the patterns differing on each spider.  
Peter nicknamed another of the spiders Billy – both for his behaviour, and because the striped blue and red pattern reminded him of the style of jumper Baker often wore.

More importantly, their ability to shoot webs was beyond anything Peter could find in the textbooks. Rather than painstakingly weave the webs, the novum aranea could shoot webs across the cage, then pull themselves across on them straight away.

There was a thick tree branch, rooted upright, which to scale must be the equivalent of one of the larger oaks in Central Park. But none of the six seemed to have trouble hitting it from ground level, and pulling themselves up in a matter of seconds.  
He sat and watched their interactions in awe for several minutes, forgetting to even take notes.  
They really were remarkable.


	12. Dr Bruce Banner vs Never-Ending Pain

It'd been a long journey to put together even a theoretical understanding of subatomic energy (colloquially known as gamma radiation). The process involved a long list of great thinkers -Planck and Einstein had originated the theories, Howard Stark and Jon Arkinshaw had built halfway practical formulae, and Banner brought dozens of loose ends together. (After he won his Nobel Prize, it had been difficult to explain the nature of his breakthrough to the mainstream press, his work went way beyond one 'eureka' moment.) There'd been a number of others who'd smoothed over the flaws he left, some of them now working under him.

Now, after several lifetimes of scientific, mathematical and technological breakthroughs, as his team stood on the verge of an energy revolution, all he could think about was his body's limitations.

* * *

The pain was unceasing. It had now been several days since the accident, and Bruce felt as if he had lived two lifetimes. His former life, full of drive, curiosity, loves and losses; and this lifetime, where his main concern was pain.

He wanted to be lucid enough to think, but several times he had demanded more morphine. He wanted his skin to heal, but had snapped at the nurses when his skin clung to the bandages as they were being changed.

This hadn't been his nature until recently. It had been stressful focusing a team full of brilliant theorists and exhausted technicians towards their common goal, while General Ross demanded that theorising halt and they press ahead with practical tests. But he had held his temper, even when it was difficult. There had been occasions when mathematical errors were made that he found obvious, or technicians approached tedious work in a slapdash manner. He would let them know that their actions were not acceptable, but he saw no benefit in yelling.

Plagued with constant pain, Bruce Banner now found himself more prone to anger. He didn't like himself when he was angry.

* * *

He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, trying to will himself to sleep. He could hear the moans of his fellow patients, and could feel his back spasming. He couldn't resist the urge to constantly move, just so the sensation of movement would distract him.

Bruce climbed out of bed, and walked across the ward. Even this was painful, but the effort needed to take the small baby steps focused his mind. He felt as if his lower legs were about to collapse under him as he dragged the wheeled morphine drip along behind him. The first bed – the one directly opposite Banner's – had the sheets pulled over the patient's head. Doctor Johnannsen's head. He was a good man, a family man. And now he was gone.

Banner lifted the chart from the end of Johannsen's bed.

The subatomic energy didn't seem to affect the laboratory machines at all. Banner wanted to see if he could figure out why its effect on humans was so wildly different to what was predicted. Though it was probably a medical issue, and beyond his expertise, it would at least occupy his mind, distract him from his guilt with the idea that he was at least trying to do something. If he could gather questions to throw at Doctor Sterns, maybe they could brainstorm something between them.

Though Johannsen's results had been quickly scribbled down, a pattern was clear – he had been getting better. Rapidly. His wounds were healing at a rate Banner found difficult to believe, and then his hormones shot up rapidly - a brain aneurysm had killed him.

Banner looked closely at the observations, his own pain fading into the back of his mind. He'd heard the term referring to the needlessly aggressive many times, but it seemed that Johannsen had been killed by excessive testosterone.


	13. Peter Parker & Tiny the Spider

The night air was biting at Peter's skin. Though he was wrapped up well, his face, neck, and hands were still exposed. The band were decent, but not all that engaging - in truth most of the crowd were probably there for want of anything better to do on a Sunday night. He could see many of his fellow students drinking more than was healthy for them. Though he wasn't in his nature to moralise, it amused him to see the progress over the course of the evening - from his friends dressing smart and playing it cool, to struggling to stay on their feet.  
Peter didn't know that many people here, and was shy, even when Harry, more of a social butterfly, introduced him to new people. It wasn't that long before Harry, clearly a little frustrated, abandoned Peter and Gwen completely. But that suited Peter - he preferred to stick to people whose company he knew he enjoyed.  
"It seems like I don't see you at all, now you're a big time scientist."  
Her face was warm and enthusiastic, dominated by her large, enthusiastic smile. She was almost as socially comfortable as Harry, but for some reason brushed off numerous people who tried to talk to her, in favour of staying with him.  
Peter wasn't sure how many of them actually knew her, and how many had seen her across the field and decided to act as if they did. Gwen was equally courteous to all, but it was clear she wanted to catch up with him.  
He felt embarrassed around her (as he did around most girls) but she was so warm, vibrant, that he couldn't help feel a sense of calm, that everything made sense.  
She leant into him, hugging her head against his shoulder, and placed an arm round his waist.  
Peter felt tense, embarrassed... but grateful that she hadn't chosen an outfit that kept her warm.

* * *

Nervously, Peter unfastened and opened a section of the top of the glass cage. Doc Connors had suggested he reach in and look at one of the spiders more closely - Tiny was the obvious choice.  
He reached down; his fingers close enough to the bottom for Tiny to reach up with his two front legs. Tiny started walking up, until he was sitting quite comfortable on the back of his left hand.  
Peter removed his hand slowly, holding his hand less than a foot from his eyes. He could see the little hairs on the back and legs, in the kind of detail that was difficult to believe. It was remarkable to think how different to humans some other animals were - he wondered how Tiny perceived the universe around him. Would he think of Peter and Doc Connors as some kind of gods? Was there anything beyond instinct going on in Tiny's mind?  
Suddenly, Peter felt a short sharp shock.  
Tiny had bitten him!  
Angry and vengeful, Peter shook the spider from his hand, causing it to fall back into the cage. It shot its webbing upward as it fell, but Peter moved his hand, causing the web to shoot further up, above hi hand, before falling back to the floor of the cage.  
Peter slammed the cage shut, and locked it, so he could look at his own wound without worrying about them escaping. Already, a pinched section of his skin was whiter than everything around it. Doc Connors had insisted that the spiders weren't poisonous... but he'd also spoken about how the traits of this new species were difficult to predict. What exactly was Tiny's intent?  
Bending down, Peter could see Tiny moving around again - the fall didn't seem to cause too much damage, though he wasn't sure what a limping spider would look like.  
Whatever the intent of the bite, it was definitely painful. Deciding it was best to be safe, Peter left his work, heading to the nearest university first aid station.


	14. Dr Bruce Banner vs Military Scepticism

Seeing Colonel Talbot's pursed lips and faintly disgusted squint, Bruce Banner pulled his baseball cap further down over his face. He knew he wasn't a pleasant sight, having caught his peeled reflection in various mirrors, but didn't like being reminded of it.  
"Gentlemen, we need to find a solution, and quickly. I cannot - absolutely cannot - allow this to spread."  
"We're pretty sure it's non-contagious, General." Bruce made sure he was the first to answer back. There was always the chance that one of the others could have been beaten into submission by General Ross.  
"And how can you be so sure, Doctor?"  
Bruce laughed at that. Despite his pain, the horror of the suffering and death of his colleagues, one scientific fact had remained constant - those without scientific training will demand absolute and total certainty.  
"We can't be absolutely certain of anything." Banner tried not to sound too much like a university lecturer. But he was aware he sometimes sounded that way, when explaining things to those without his expertise. "But we can notice patterns in how this outbreak is behaving, and compare it to previous cases, even if only in a superficial manner." He paused, looking round to make sure everyone was still with him. "It appears certain, for instance, that the... infection, for want of a better term... was spread by radiation. And only those within a certain range were affected. Radiation, generally speaking, is not contagious. A person with radiation burns does not cause radiation burns in others simply by being near them."  
"But this testosterone poisoning - it's not a normal side-effect of radiation. Is there any precedent?"  
Doctor Sterns laughed at the General's question. Whereas Banner had endeavoured to make sure the military men followed, Sterns' laughter was contemptuous. They were the only non-military personnel amongst the six in Ross' office, and they had not been made to feel welcome.  
"Is there something amusing, Doctor?"  
"No sir." Sterns disciplined himself, standing up straight in a slightly slovenly imitation of a soldier standing to attention. It wasn't quite sarcastic, but it was clear to all he didn't care about getting it right. "It's just that the idea of testosterone poisoning... it's a gross oversimplification of what's happening to the patients." There was a slight irreverence to his tone – he clearly felt no fear of the General. He wanted to get back to his rounds, rather than be here. "We've used the term only as working shorthand - we're not totally sure which chemicals it is that are spiking."  
The pattern had repeated itself a number of times – some of those with radiation burns had become stronger. There had been cases of skin discoloration, and of restraints being broken. Broken by patients who should have had no chance of breaking through, but somehow, in rage-induced strength, had managed it.

Already, two days after the explosion, the base's supply of morphine was running low.  
"Forgive me, but I don't quite understand why Doctor Sterns is here."  
Colonel Talbot spoke in a voice every bit as neat and clipped as his short moustache. He was, in pretence at least, directing the question to General Ross. Talbot was a man who, Bruce suspected, would prefer every organisation be run by military dictatorship.

"Sam's a smart doctor; I've been running questions by him whenever I've needed a medical viewpoint for our problems." Bruce paused; making sure Talbot was listening, and raised his voice further. "We're treating this partially as a matter of radioactivity, partially as an unprecedented medical outbreak. I'd say that we could do with a medical viewpoint on that problem, don't you agree Talbot?"  
Talbot bit his lip, trying to think of a way to force Bruce to back down. He was the archetypal off the production line soldier - disciplined, uptight, angered by the slovenliness of any non-military mind. He looked to Ross for support, but was met only by a broadly amused smile, the smile of a leader wise enough to know solutions come from many angles, that no one method of inquiry was flawless. Ross' smile, as close to laughter as he was likely to come, told Talbot that it would be wise to back down.  
Though he and the General had their differences, Bruce liked Thaddeus Ross. He was tough, but he kept things working, and kept his men in line. Besides, any man who raised Betty to be the wonder she was couldn't be all bad.  
"If we have no further ideas, we'll leave discussions there for today," Ross announced. "Doctor Sterns, the supplies your department requested should arrive at nightfall."  
Sterns nodded the acknowledgment, but, passing Banner, stopped to speak under his breath.  
"If we'd been given twice the supplies projections said we needed, we wouldn't have to cut things so close."  
Sterns had made the complaint to Bruce before - given that they were right on the cutting edge of science, it was nearly impossible to tell what could happen, making their projections unreliable at best - as events had proven.  
Bruce smiled, a smile he kept to himself, remaining seated until the room had been emptied.  
"Was there something else you wanted Doctor?" asked General Ross, when he turned, his eyes on the report he'd just picked up from his desk.  
"Yes, there is." The General still referred to him by his title when they were in work situations, despite the fact that he was more or less a member of the family. "I'm pretty sure that patients are being murdered."  
That got Ross' attention. He lowered the hand holding the report, and his lower lip dropped slightly, visible beneath his walrus moustache. He placed the report on the table, and walked around the room, closing the door.  
"Do you realise the implications of what you're saying, Bruce?" He stood over the doctor, his normal booming voice lowered to a relative whisper. Doctor Banner had his reply worked out hours before the question was asked.  
"Sterns and I have looked over the medical charts of the three patients who've passed away so far. Shortly before death, there's always a spike of chemical elements that seems unnatural in comparison to what has gone before. I'm not sure if it's a doctor or a soldier, but I'm convinced someone is killing the sick."  
"What motive would anyone have?"  
The general, normally one to give commands without the vaguest hint of uncertainty, seemed to be pleading with him. Banner couldn't compromise.  
"Base security? The risk of the infection spreading, or growing? We've seen the infected become stronger than they should be, and their skin turn slightly green. It's not impossible someone would be worried."  
General Ross stepped back, his face widening in shock, even horror, that such an accusation could be made.  
"No."  
"No?"  
"No. I won't have you spreading these kinds of rumours any further, Doctor. This is a tough time, and it would be bad for base morale." The normal strength and certainty had returned to Ross' voice.  
"But General, what if there is someone? Shouldn't this at least be investigated?"  
"It's paranoia, Doctor. I'll hear no more of it."  
"But what-"  
"No more of it."


	15. Peter Parker & Friends

"Ouch."

Harry smirked as he spoke, but Peter knew him well enough not to take it personally, smiling back. He'd removed the bandage on his left hand, revealing the swollen section caused by the spider bite.

"That's what you get for spending your evenings with spiders. Maybe next time you'll accept my offer of a night at Osborn Manor?"

Peter smiled.

"Don't tell me you feel neglected? All the best toys and friends money can buy, and you missed little old me?"

"Just get a room, you two."

Gwen had been standing back, looking on silently, but stepped in now. Peter held out his exposed hand to her as he had to Harry – she gently took it in her own and moved it a little closer to her eyes.

"Are you sure that's okay?" she whispered shyly.

Peter felt a little embarrassed by the concern on her face. Like teenage boys the world over, he was more comfortable with detachment and irony than open displays of emotion. Still, it was nice to feel so cared for.

"The nurse at the university said it's probably not as bad as it looks. I've got a doctor's appointment on Friday to check up on it."

Gwen held his hand close enough to her spectacled eyes to give a good impression of a medical examination. She always either wore contacts or went without on occasions like the concert the other night, when she dressed up. But he thought she looked just as pretty in her glasses.

"Just promise me you'll be careful, okay?" Her request was spoken with tenderness, her eyes seeming to widen as she did so. "If it's a new species, there's no way of telling what those spiders are capable of."

Their moment of intimacy was interrupted by loud laughter from Harry, who saw in the body language of his friends what each thought they saw in the other, but dismissed as too good to be true.

"I think you two need to get a room."

The pair shrunk in on themselves, each looking away, in fear that the other might discover how they felt.

* * *

Peter threw his bag down on his bed, looking around for his rail pass as he gulped down half a can of soda. Spotting it on his cabinet, he reached across. Slipping, he placed his left hand on the wall to try and stop himself… and found it stuck.

Confused, Peter halted his hectic search, and looked at the wall. He couldn't see anything, and, running his fingertips across the wall, the wall didn't feel sticky.

He placed his left hand against another part of the wall, again, it was sticking there as well. He tried the same with his right hand – but that slid right off.

Peter held the palm of his hand up to his eyes, so closely that his eyeballs were almost touching. They were tiny, but, in between the ridges of his fingerprint, he was sure he could see hairs. He ran the thumb of his right hand upwards from the bottom of his left palm, and could feel a little discomfort – the sensation of pushing against the grain. He moved his thumb in the opposite direction, without impediment.

His hand seemed to have the same kind of bristles that allowed spiders to grip uneven surfaces, growing from within his skin.


	16. Dr Bruce Banner & Betty Ross

Was he being paranoid? Maybe the pain was causing him to imagine things; maybe the spike in chemicals was naturally occurring. Sterns had been complaining of migraines, no doubt a result of barely resting since the accident, so his thinking could also be compromised…

Bruce lay in his hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, trying his hardest not to move around. He ran number puzzles through his head - trying to remember pi to as many decimal places as he could, and thinking through the latest ideas on Fermat's Last Theorem, on the off chance that his outsider's perspective would enable him to provide an insight.  
But nothing managed to distract him.  
Just days ago, he'd been working to harness energy from the smallest scale imaginable, trying to make a breakthrough as revolutionary for human development as fire once was. Now he could think of nothing but the agony.

* * *

Bruce knocked politely on the half open library door.  
"Hello?"  
There were tall stacks of books on the tables, and long sections of shelves that were totally vacant.  
"Is anyone here?"  
A gorgeous young woman walked round from behind a row of bookcases, her delicate frame holding at least half a dozen thick books. He was taken aback by her beauty - he knew the general's daughter was working here, but he'd not yet met her.  
"I'm sorry to interrupt you…"  
He laughed as he spoke, slightly nervously. Placing a hand on the back of his neck, he massaged the tension he felt, in a habit he'd carried with him for a long time. Though he was now in charge of a major research programme, he still hadn't gotten the knack of being indifferent about inconveniencing others.  
"I was going to ask a favour, but if it's a bad time?"  
She was smiling back at him, with a slight shyness evident on her soft, warm face. She reddened, ever so slightly, but grinned back at him.  
"No worse than any other. I'm starting a library from scratch - the Dewey Decimal system's harder than I imagined to set up."  
Bruce moved in from the doorway, to the first set of shelves. Taking a random book down, he looked at the bottom of its spine, labelled with a sticker bearing a series of numbers.  
"You seem to be doing a good job, as far as I can tell." Returning the book, he looked into her eyes. "I've heard good things about this place, thought I'd stop by and check it out."  
She laughed, nervously. She smiled, broadly, a smile that spread across her face and revealed angelically white teeth. Her long black hair was arranged neatly behind her head, and in her white blouse and ankle-length skirt, she had the appropriate look for a librarian. Bruce wondered how far this was her normal dress code, and how far she'd altered herself to what was expected of her. He'd gotten into the habit of wearing shirts (and occasionally lab-coats), despite feeling more comfortable in the t-shirt and jeans he was currently wearing.  
"I'm glad my reputation's growing."  
Suddenly he realised that, in a split-second or two, he'd moved on from trying to decode clues about her personality, to admiring her figure. A little ashamed of himself, he pulled back - she was of course, a person first and foremost. Besides, on an isolated army base, with naturally aggressive, young male soldiers massively outnumbering women, she was likely to be subject to that kind of objectification elsewhere.  
Bruce placed his hands against his jeans pockets. Even though he wasn't fond of labcoats, a place to hide his nervous hands would be useful now.  
"I'm sorry," she said, softly, "I didn't catch your name?"  
She placed the books on the corner of a nearby table, bending elegantly as she lowered, then raised herself.  
"Bruce Banner."  
He smiled cheekily, boyishly - he knew the impact that his name would have. Ever since he became a minor legend while still studying at Cal Tech, his name alone had been enough to act as a chat-up line. Combined with a cheeky, nervous grin, he'd found it made him more or less irresistible to the geekier girls. When he left the safety of campus life to work at the underfunded research arm of Roxxon Corp, it'd been a shock to his system to learn that he'd once again have to work to impress the fairer sex...  
"Bruce Banner?" Her face lit up, she was a little delighted by the pleasant surprise. "I've been hearing a lot about you."  
It was just like being back at college.  
"Well, I like to let my legend build before introducing myself."  
They shared a laugh at his daft joke, her face lighting up even more than it had before.  
Given the choice, women liked a charmer, Bruce had long ago realised. But if they suddenly realise that the charming guy is a world-class genius, he suddenly becomes even more attractive.  
Though enjoying himself, he could feel nerves building, butterflies flying at cross-paths to each other within his stomach. It'd been over two months since his arrival on base, and he'd been too consumed by his work to even consider romance. But this girl seemed more than worth the time.  
"It is Liz, isn't it?"  
"Well, I prefer Betty."  
Whether deliberate or subconscious, she placed her body at a slight angle, the curve of her hips accentuated by her stance.  
"Oh? That's a bit of an old-fashioned choice."  
She smiled, naughtily. His line had been intended as a playful nudge, and she'd taken it that way.  
"Sometimes the old-fashioned things are the best. You know you can rely on them."  
Bruce nodded, melodramatically.  
"True. It's always nice to know where you stand, to be sure of things." He paused, for effect. "Of course, as one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, I don't always have that comfort." He sighed, melodramatically. "But, we all have our burdens..."  
Betty laughed. With her smile still broad across her face she leaned in, close enough that he could smell her perfume.  
"I thought you were meant to be humble, and modest."  
He shrugged, and looked away with a nervous grin, unable to totally keep up the pretence of ego the joke relied on.  
"I like to drop that into conversation wherever I can."  
It wasn't quite true. But he was, despite a natural timidity, comfortable with the fact he was one of the smartest people in the world in his area of expertise. It was fun to be a little bit cocky, from time to time.

* * *

Bruce thought back to the day he'd first met Betty, how much the physical impact of his nerves had played on him, how he'd worried about his nerves overwhelming him, and ruining his chance with this great girl. He thought about how excited he'd been to get to know the beautiful librarian.  
He wondered if he would ever feel that good again.


	17. Peter Parker &Scientific Self-Evaluation

Peter threw back the last of his mashed potatoes, while Aunt May and Uncle Ben were still halfway through their meals.

"Do we have any more, Aunt May?"

"I'm afraid not sweetie. You've taken the last of what I cooked."

Uncle Ben looked suspiciously across the table at him.

"What's with your appetite? You've been devouring huge portions of everything lately."

Though both his great-aunt and great-uncle were in their early sixties, Aunt May hit her husband in the arm with the force of a younger woman.

"Shush. He's a growing boy, it's perfectly natural for him to have an appetite."

Peter was pretty sure this appetite wasn't natural.

* * *

He removed the measuring tape from around his bicep, and picked up the pen on his desk. It was the last of his measurements, and, like the others, he was noticeably changing.

It was now just under four days since he was bitten by Tiny, and not only had both hands sprouted microscopic hairs, but his body was becoming more toned. He was skinny and flabby to begin with, so the changes were all the more noticeable. His appetite seemed to have increased – he'd found himself eating what felt like double his normal portions at the dinner table. It made sense – his body couldn't increase its size without getting the energy from somewhere.

Having said that, there was the creature known as 'The Incredible Hulk' that had torn across middle America when he was a little boy, and seemed to change its size from hour to hour. But, as far as Peter knew, that was the only creature in the world to have broken the basic scientific principle.

Peter had chickened out of telling Connors about the changes he was going through, and hadn't mentioned them to his doctor. (He imagined this would be beyond his doctor's experience.)

Nervously, Peter removed his trousers, and felt the bristles that had grown beneath his knees. He placed both his hands and knees against the wall of his bedroom, and began climbing. As if that wasn't remarkable enough, he was soon upside down on the ceiling. With the blood rushing to his head, he began to feel dizzy, and climbed back down.

He wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but the dizzy spells seemed to be getting less severe.

* * *

Peter had been reading scientific papers on genetics and mutations more regularly since working with Doc Connors. Connors had recommended a number of papers he might find interesting, and while a number of them were incomprehensible, he'd learned a lot.

Doctor Xavier's _Mutations and The Future of Evolution, _focused entirely on natural adaptions, didn't seem to apply to his own changes. Peter found more practical help in _Genetics at the Subatomic Level. _Written by Banner and Sterns, it was an unfinished work based partially on their own experiences at Los Diablos, and the changes undergone twenty years earlier by the team of astronauts known as the 'Fantastic Four'.

Peter had trouble with the technical language, and his understanding wasn't helped by the fact that the pair passed away before they could complete their work. Nevertheless, it was the closest to an understanding any scientists had been able to work out.

It seemed, based on Banner and Sterns' work, that these spiders had some sort of access to subatomic genetics, that he was being altered in the same way that the Fantastic Four and the nameless individual who became The Hulk had been.

He desperately hoped that his changes would turn out to be more akin to those experienced by Reed Richards than The Hulk.


	18. DrBruce Banner vs The Scientific Problem

Bruce was sat up in his hospital bed, with sheets of medical reports laid out in front of him. The patient to his right was coughing loudly. Bruce thought he'd heard the patient referred to as Kent – the name of a canteen worker – but the burns and boils on his face made him impossible to recognise. Almost without break, he was violently coughing, many times forcing blood upwards.

The radiation burns were predictable and explainable, but the muscular growth, skin discoloration, and fatal dose of hormones, were not.

Some had become green, others red, a handful grey. And why was Kent more harshly affected than himself, when he had been right at the centre of the explosion?

He owed it to the dead and dying to try and figure out what was happening – perhaps even to reverse the damage that the subatomic energy had done.

Doctor Sterns placed another file on Banner's bed. He was clearly on edge, looking around with a mild sense of paranoia.

"I really shouldn't be sharing all this with you, Bruce."

"I realise that. But I need to know if the hormonal surge is natural. If we've got a murderer on base –"

"I know. But you need to rest. Your burns are healing pretty quickly, but we don't know what level of skin transplant you'll need. I don't want you exhausting yourself."

Bruce looked at his friend – he was clearly tired, and lacked his normal sarcastic spark.

"You don't look great yourself, Sam."

Sterns smiled.

"Just overwork. There are only four doctors on staff. We've been working twelve hour days ever since you decided to see what'd happen if you dosed us with gamma radiation."

Bruce smiled – he knew the insult was meant as a slightly tasteless joke.

The sly smile melted from Sterns' face, to be replaced with a more honest expression.

"I'm exhausted, and I've got the worst migraine. It feels like my brain's trying to force its way through my skull."

Bruce smiled, sympathetically.

"Hopefully it won't get too much worse."

"It's easy for you to say that – lounging around in your bed all day."

Bruce laughed loudly. As much as he enjoyed Betty's company, it was tinged with guilt over what he was putting her through. Sam's bedside manner – while unorthodox – really made him feel better.

After a pause, clearly hesitating over whether to speak, Sterns asked a question:

"Bruce, I've got an idea. It might be crazy, let me know what you think."

Banner was intrigued.

"Go on."

"I was thinking about the crew of Libra One. The crew who were exposed to cosmic radiation."

"You mean the Fantastic Four?"

"Yeah."

He only spoke one syllable, but the contempt Sterns felt for that name was clear. He'd never seemed the type for the slightly melodramatic – he was downbeat and sarcastic person at almost all times.

"Last night, I finally read that book you've been recommending."

It was a pop science book – _The Rise of the Fantastic Four_ – written with the intent of explaining one of the century's greatest scientific mysteries to a lay audience. It was widely acknowledged that Reed Richards, while a brilliant scientist, was a lousy writer.

"I was thinking, could the subatomic energy have the same effects? The discoloration of the skin, and increased muscle mass, it could be slightly similar to what happened to Ben Grimm."

Banner took in Sterns' suggestion. The emergence of the Fantastic Four, and the science behind their changes, had fascinated him as a teenager. He'd tried to work out why they'd changed, but ultimately there wasn't enough data on the wave of 'cosmic radiation' for even Reed Richards to explain it.

It was definitely a new approach, one that wouldn't have occurred to Banner.

"It's an interesting idea. I'll give it some thought."

Sam left, leaving Bruce alone with an exciting new idea, and James Kent's aggressive coughing.


	19. Peter Parker vs An Average School Day

Split second after split second, Peter caught the books and camera as they tumbled out of his locker.

Normally he wouldn't have reacted so fast, but he hadn't even thought about it – the mess in his locker had tumbled out as he opened the locker door.

He shoved a handful of books back into the disorganised locker, poured a few into his backpack, and placed his camera – a decent quality one, better than the disposable one he'd bought for use in the lab – around his neck.

Closing the locker, Peter spotted his best friend on the far side of the crowded hall.

"Hey, Harry!"

Peter snapped his friend as he turned, the flashbulb momentarily blinding him, putting him on the defensive.

It'd been two days since Harry had had thin red lines dyed from side to side in his hair, but it hadn't stopped looking ridiculous to Peter.

"You had your finger over the lens."

Peter raised the front of the camera upwards, looking at where his hands were positioned - he still had a lot to learn about photography.

He grinned.

"I know. It's a technique – I wanted to hide your head, while you've got that ridiculous haircut. You'll thank me later."

Harry put an arm round Peter's shoulder, and started walking down towards the school's front door, grinning as broadly and happily as Peter.

"This style is very in right now. As you'd know if you ever looked at a fashion magazine."

Harry looked up at Peter's much messier hair. "Do you even comb that mess?"

The pair laughed, but Peter became too distracted to bother with a comeback.

"Gwen!"

He broke away from Harry's grip, and chased across the hall towards her.

She'd been walking with Liz Allan – both turned when they heard Peter. Realising it was him, Liz looked away, spotted Flash Thompson, and had walked away from Gwen by the time the boys reached her.

"How about a photo, Gwen?"

Gwen lifted her textbook to hide her face.

"Don't – I look awful!"

Gwen wasn't wearing contacts, but was wearing her half-circle of glass held in place only by the tiniest wire-frames.

Her hair was looking a little messy today, but even that looked sexy. Her broad hairband was the same vibrant shade of red as her sweatshirt, a colour that contrasted nicely against her light blond hair.

Peter often disagreed strongly with Gwen's self-consciousness, but generally went along with her– afraid to push back in case she realised how he felt.

But not today.

"You look amazing. You always do – I don't get how you don't see it."

"Peter, you're just –"

"I'm not anything. You're gorgeous and I don't get how you don't see it."

Peter couldn't quite believe he'd just said that. He'd thought it so many times, but timidly accepted that maybe she had a point he wasn't seeing.

In recent weeks, working with Doc Connors, traversing back and forth across New York, and now with the effects of the spider-bite making him feel more athletic, Peter was feeling bolder, more confident.

Confident enough to tell Gwen that he was right, and she was wrong.

There were other girls who put more effort into their looks than Gwen – a few who seemed to step out of a glossy magazine every morning.

Gwen's style – sometimes stylish in a traditional sense, other times a little geeky but with a beautiful warmth – was far more appealing than someone with a more traditionally model-like style. There were a few of those girls at Forest Hills High, but only one Gwen Stacy.

"Maybe a stronger prescription would help." Gwen's features moved inward and her lips pursed slightly, into a look of confusion.

"Sorry?" she laughed.

"You know, to see what's obvious to the rest of us."

Peter grinned cockily, a smile that challenged her to disagree – she laughed again.

"I didn't have time to do my hair this morning," she ran her free hand through her locks, "and I'm just wearing an old sweatshirt…"

Peter turned towards Harry, who had his eyebrows raised and arms folded, his face painted with an amused smile.

"She's getting cocky now. Boasting about how it doesn't take much effort to look that good."

Shyly, Gwen smiled a little, flattered and embarrassed by the compliment in equal amounts. She opened her mouth a little, searching for a protest she couldn't quite find, and probably didn't want to discover.

Her face changed in shade, moving away from a similar pale shade to her hair, becoming a little more of a match to her jacket and hairband.

Peter leant in, deciding to do something he'd wanted to do for months, placing a hand softly against her cheek.

Suddenly, the thought crossed his mind that she might not want to be kissed, so he stopped, little more than an inch from her face.

So many times before he'd held back, convinced her expression meant she wasn't interested in him, or dismissing an expression that he thought was an encouragement… but that he distrusted as too good to be true. Looking at her open expression, this time he knew she wanted to be kissed. He placed his lips against hers, and squeezed her tight.

After a moment of bliss, Peter pulled away.

Shyly, embarrassedly, they both smiled. With her free hand, Gwen took hold of Peter's, gently squeezing.

Harry was smirking at them.

"It's about time."


	20. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD

Agent training was only four weeks long, but it had seemed an eternity.  
Nick Fury's military experience meant he flew through all the physical tests, coming out top of the four by a distance in anything that required stamina, physical power, or precise shooting.  
He'd also performed pretty well on logic puzzles - though he'd not been trained in any form of abstract thinking, he held his own.  
But the new 'facts' he was being fed were ludicrous.  
American Shield, he'd been told, had been formed during the Revolutionary War, to root out assassins and conspirators plotting against high profile figures. They'd faded from power during the nineteenth century, but eugenic experiments led to the organisation being relaunched, as Super-Human Intelligence, Examination & Limited Defence – SHIELD, in brief.  
Fury had been informed that the spaceship - if that was truly what it was - had been discovered buried near the South Pole, by the explorer Roald Amundsen, who had then been recruited by SHIELD.  
It was a claim so ludicrous that Fury had flown into a rage against his instructor, asking how dumb SHIELD thought they were, and how they managed to find people willing to silently consume this crap - amongst other queries.  
Among the instructors, Nicholas Fury was not the most popular new recruit.

* * *

Sweat covering his face, Fury lifted the weights one last time, throwing all his strength into heaving the 300lb high above him, bringing then bringing them down to rest.  
Remaining on his back, he panted as Hudson and Callahan, two of his three fellow new recruits, stood over him.  
Regaining his breath, he asked a question.  
"So, do either of you two realise how ludicrous this place is?" Hudson passed him a towel, which Fury soaked in sweat from his face. "It must be a multimillion dollar setup, to fight a problem that can't possibly exist."

Fury threw and Hudson caught the wet towel - Hudson smirked as he did so.  
"I've seen some pretty amazing things. I believe what the directors tell us."  
Fury turned towards Callahan.  
"What about you? You were stuck behind a desk; do you buy the party line?"  
Callahan was a skinny twenty-something who'd came either bottom or very close in all physical tests. But he wasn't especially unfit, and scored pretty well in the puzzles. He seemed to have the respect of Hudson, the most jock-like of the three internal recruits being trained alongside Fury.  
Callahan shrugged.  
"I suppose. Everything I've seen checks out."  
"Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe," Hudson grinned.

A blond-haired all-American from one of the mid-West states, Hudson had worn a Saint Christopher medallion on more than one occasion, though Fury had only heard him quote scripture in an ironic context. He seemed to take an un-Christian pleasure in provoking Fury's scepticism.  
"How can you just accept what you're told? The things we're being told are ludicrous!"

Hudson smirked, and leaned casually against a rack holding a range of dumbbells.  
"Any more ludicrous than a secret underground government facility, with an alien spaceship in a hangar?"  
That was his answer to everything.  
Fury clenched his fist tightly - he wasn't enjoying being the lone sceptic, but he felt an inarguable urge to get to the bottom of whatever SHIELD was. Besides, he'd resigned his military commission, there was no way back now.  
He lifted the barbell above his head, and resumed his presses.

* * *

Fury stood, not so much pacing across the empty, windowless meeting room as charging back and forth. Barely twenty foot square, it was too small a space for a physical specimen like Fury to be contained in, and he had nothing to occupy his mind.  
The door opened, and Bucky entered, carrying a manila folder.  
Fury took his place on one side of the desk.  
"Sorry for keeping you waiting Nick."  
"Any chance you're going to tell me what happened to the blond technician?"  
Bucky didn't look up, his eyes remaining glued to the folder that he held open with one hand, and leafed through with the other.  
"I've told you Nick, that's above your access grade."

Bucky spoke in a flat tone – he was a little worn down by Fury's insistence, but found it too routine to be annoyed.  
Fury hadn't seen the technician around since he'd shared his observation that she seemed out of place.  
Did that mean she'd been detained? Or maybe she'd been fired for incompetence?  
Bucky sat opposite Fury, closing the folder and putting it on the table between them. Contained within were details of Fury's first assignment as a SHIELD Field Agent - although he'd been a disruptive influence, he'd aced all the tests.  
"Our first target has been code-named The Purple Man."  
Fury sighed. In almost every way SHIELD was worse than the army - he was only sticking around out of a combination of curiosity and prickly bloody-mindedness.  
"The Purple Man? Why do they call him that?"  
Buchanan-Barnes spun the file around, and opened it to the front page, revealing a paperclipped photo.  
"He's a man, and he's purple."


	21. Peter Parker vs Financial Reality

"Uncle Ben…" Peter spoke under his breath after Aunt May had left the small dining room. "I need to ask you a favour."

"Sure, Peter."

"It's costing me a lot to go back and forth to Doc Connors' lab. I need a bit more money…"

Peter winced as he mumbled the last few words, and the smile fell from Ben's face.

"Peter, you know I'd do anything I can, but we've already given you so much."

"It's okay Uncle Ben, forget I asked."

Peter turned away from his great-uncle, gathering the plates and bowls on the table together.

"Peter, if we had the money, we'd give it to you."

Bent over the table, he looked back up at Ben's elderly face, the wrinkles on his face just a little contorted.

"I know Uncle Ben. I'm grateful for all you've done. I'll find a way."

* * *

After fastening the chinstrap to his helmet, Peter spotted Gwen over in the bleachers, and raced over.

"Gwen! What… What are you doing here?"

Though he wasn't sure, he felt like she was checking out the way he looked in his tight-fitting wrestling uniform.

"I couldn't miss my boyfriend taking on Flash Thompson, could I?"

Peter grinned.

"It's only a practice match. Flash has a weakness against speedy wrestlers, so I'm sparring with him." Peter felt more and more energised, the nerves beating away against the inside of his stomach. Nothing had ever felt as good as just looking at Gwen did. "Shouldn't you be in debate club practice?"

She grinned, baring her full row of perfectly white teeth, her cheeks slightly reddening.

"I should be. But I'm sure Harry will be able to think of an excuse for me."

She reached out, taking Peter's hand in hers. "Debate club basically trains us to be good liars."

She spoke softly, almost whispering. She was clearly as nervous at this kind of flirtatious interaction as Peter was.

"Does it teach you to break the rules as well?"

Gwen held Peter's hand up to her soft lips and gently kissed it. She looked like an angel as she sparkled tenderly up at him, her blue eyes twinkling underneath her tidy blond fringe.

"No, I'm just a bad, bad girl."

Peter felt almost unbearably overcome with nervous excitement, as Gwen giggled in embarrassment.

"Parker!"

There was always something to spoil a nice moment.

"I'll be right back, I just need to beat up Flash."

Peter could feel a swagger in his body as he ran to the ring. He looked over his shoulder as Gwen blew a kiss towards him – he felt like he was leaving paradise behind.

"Sorry Coach Fieldman."

"You'd better be sorry. You're on my time now, Parker."

Fieldman's face was stiff, humourless. Peter threw a cheeky grin at the coach.

"I promise I'll be worth the wait."

Fieldman rolled his eyes so far that they may have rolled right out of his head, before turning away.

As Peter stepped up, Flash was stood at the far side of the ring, apparently enraged at having been kept waiting. His face was grim and focused, his stance broad and dextrous.

"You're a ray of sunshine, aren't you?"

He didn't respond. Peter realised it probably wasn't smart to poke the bear.

"And… fight!"

On Fieldman's instruction, Thompson charged towards him.

* * *

Sprinting down the platform, Peter had just seconds before the doors closed, leaving him behind. His bag was heavy, and his legs ached, but he kept going… making it through the doors just before they closed.

He collapsed in the corridor between carriages, laughing as exhaustion hit. A month ago, he could never have kept running that long. But not only was he developing strange climbing powers, his entire body was leaner and more muscular.

Peter sat where he was, one hand on the dirty floor. He reached into his bag, and took out a clipping he'd torn from the previous night's newspaper, a job he wanted to look into.

The New York Wrestling Extravaganza was running open trials for new wrestlers.


	22. Nick Fury vs 'The Purple Man'

"So these… super-humans. They're the results of genetic experiments?"

"For the most part, yes. There's some that aren't – as far as we can tell. But that may just be because we're not seeing a big enough picture."

Fury was accompanying Buchanan-Barnes on his first assignment – he'd been told he would be assigned a more permanent senior partner after a few excursions into the field.

For now he was with his former army commander, sitting together in a Boston hotel room, trying to work out how such a sharp man had fallen for such ridiculous lies.

Fury folded his clothes with army precision, empty sleeves running diagonally across the shirt he'd worn during the day.

"But there could be superhumans born that way, who are unknowingly the result of eugenics exercises, carried out by Nathan Essex and his contemporaries?"

Some things became more normal with repetition. No matter how many times the SHIELD party line left his lips, they didn't sound any less ludicrous.

"Yes, that's one of several working theories." Bucky – Nick was struggling to think of him by his nickname – was deadly serious. It saddened him to see a hard military mind accept such gibberish.

But, aside from concern for his friend, Fury was prepared to play along with this. Boston was a nice city, and he was getting a good wage to go along with this delusion.

* * *

The pair sat outside a bar, looking across the street. Bucky was wearing an unbuttoned grey casual jacket and porkpie hat; Fury wore a leather jacket and shades, protecting him from the bright but cold Boston sun.

"Zebediah Killgrave?" Fury asked.

"That's him."

The colour of his skin was attention-grabbing enough, but Killgrave walked with two attractive, well-dressed women. From the way they were dressed, and the poise they held themselves with, they could very possibly have been models.

Fury turned his attention back to Killgrave's skin.

It must have been some sort of film production makeup, nothing more complicated than that. Stranger than his appearance was the fact that nobody seemed to be shocked by the way he looked. As a black man, Fury had gotten both fear and hostility in less than an hour walking these streets – a purple man apparently inspired less hostility than a black man in modern America.

Fury had responded with his coolest, most casual smile – one that children warmed to, women found disconcerting, and, in alliance with his muscular frame, told men that he could take them down with ease if they tried anything. But 'The Purple Man' apparently had no need to even go that far.

A teenage boy slowed as he crossed Killgrave's path – seemingly shocked by the man's appearance. Killgrave turned his head to speak to him – whatever he said relaxed the adolescent.

That seemed to confirm Fury's hypothesis – he was an actor, or maybe a male model, playing an alien in some photoshoot.

Was it possible that SHIELD was so incompetently run, that an actor from a film-set or play had inspired panic, simply by heading onto the street in costume during a break between scenes?

* * *

"I'm going across."

Bucky spoke with military precision, his face coloured with seriousness and certainty. He rotated the last drops of his scotch round the inside of his glass before downing it, and rose to his feet, straightening his hat.

"I'm just going to observe from inside the bar, not make contact. We need to know a little more about how he operates before we do that."

Fury gave a slight nod in response. Everything the Major suggested made sense on its own terms – if you accepted that aliens and superhumans existed, then everything else flowed logically from that. The problem was the logical fallacy that all else depended on.

* * *

A joyful, goofy smile filled Bucky's face as he reappeared, hat under his arm. How drunk could he have possibly have gotten in twenty minutes?

He ran across the road, a car breaking suddenly to avoid interrupting his path, his face lightened by a broad grin all the while. He didn't seem to notice the traffic, or the pedestrians who diverted around the oblivious path he made towards Fury.

Bucky's face was filled not just with joy, but surprise – as if he had just this minute received a vital revelation, the kind that changed the course of history, the kind that caused Archimedes to leap from the bath.

"I've remembered something very important!"

Fury examined Bucky's face for some sign that this was an act a performance, a hint, however subtle. There was nothing subtle to be found there.

"What's that sir?"

"Ice cream!"

"Ice cream?"

"There's an ice cream parlour down the road! We can get ice cream from there!"

The SHIELD training missions had instructed the inductees to 'expect the unexpected', to be prepared for any possibilities. Though Fury had passed with flying colours, this was throwing him off. He was dumbstruck as he looked up at his former unit commander. For once in his life, Nicholas Fury was speechless.

"Come on! We need to go and get some ice cream. It's a perfect day for ice cream!"

"It's not especially warm…"

"Every day's a perfect day for ice cream!"

This had to be some sort of training mission – he'd been put in a situation he couldn't possibly have seen coming, to test his initiative. Maybe if he passed it in sufficient style, he'd finally get a proper answer about SHIELD's true nature.

"You go and get the ice cream. I'll just be a few minutes."

Intense disappointment filled Bucky's face, replaced quickly with a broad, innocent smile.

Normally Bucky was a sly man – a man with a sense of humour, certainly, but a soldier first and foremost – a man who'd seen war and had a corner of his mind forever darkened as a result. But now, he was acting like a buffoon.

"Promise you won't be too long?" Bucky appeared sincerely hurt. If this was an act, it was a good act.

"I promise."

Bucky broke off down the road, jogging at a steady pace.

Fury stood, straightened his jacket, and walked towards the bar opposite.


	23. Bruce Banner vs The Medical Mystery

The smell of antiseptic was beginning to make Bruce feel suffocated.  
It was more an abstract sense than anything concrete. An association formed in his mind between medicinal sterility and the feeling of boredom, along the lines Pavlov's dogs formed between the experimenter's bell and food.  
He touched the raw skin of his right cheek, stripped of part of the epidermis, and came away with puss on his hand.

Banner was on edge, sitting beside a now vacant bed, looking over the results of the fourth CHECK patient to die, while a fifth body was taken away. He felt stressed, on edge, angry - was this because of his inability to break through, or an effect of the subatomic energy?  
Excess testosterone and muscle growth had been a symptom in others - maybe the same was occurring in him. Perhaps the deaths of his fellow patients were natural; perhaps the spike in hormones that caused a brain aneurysm in each of the five dead so far actually **_was_** occurring naturally.  
But he couldn't shake off the feeling that someone was causing the aneurysms. Whether it was a soldier paranoid about base security or some twisted angel of mercy, he couldn't say, but his instincts told him that the evidence, inconclusive as it was, led to something.  
Bruce sat, awkwardly, as the body of Akosua Jawara was wheeled away on a stretcher. She was a good woman, with a sharp mind. There'd been a handful of black and female scientists who he'd had to fight to get onto his team - General Ross' superiors seemed to be stuck in a pre-Civil Rights mentality. Even in 1984, when Britain had a female Prime Minister and Chicago had a black mayor, there were some old men who refused to change.  
If I hadn't fought so hard, Bruce thought, she'd still be alive.  
The soldiers moved away her body, talking solemnly between them as they did.  
Soldiers - particularly young soldiers - can make a joke out of almost anything, be light-hearted about imminent death, he'd learned that much over recent months. But here they were professional, formal - clearly they were worried.  
Bruce stood, his thighs in agony as he did. It felt like his legs couldn't take his weight, and the burns seemed stuck to the hospital gown he was wearing under his trousers.  
He'd been allowed to wear his own clothes over the gown that left him feeling incredibly exposed, and allowed to move around, provided he didn't interfere in anyone's treatment. It was best that he hide his pain, he realised, or they may force him to strip down to just the gown, with his rear exposed any time he wanted to leave his bed.  
Dragging his morphine drip along with him, Bruce moved over to Jawara's bed, still unkempt and messy. He liked her - she was sharp, energetic, with none of the bitterness he'd expected from someone who'd been discriminated against on two fronts. There wasn't a hint of self-pity or anger to her, though he had felt it on her behalf. He thought about her sweet, smile, her eager to please energy. He was going to miss her.

"Doctor Banner."  
A male nurse caught his attention as he stood over the vacated bed of his friend.  
"I've got the autopsy report on Castro. Doctor Sterns told me to send a copy up to you as soon as it's complete."  
Bruce smiled, a warm, affectionate smile - the nurse was eager to please. Generally it was a smile that put people at ease, but it didn't seem to work this time. Perhaps the nurse was also on edge, or perhaps the burns and scars on Banner's face made him less reassuring.  
He sunk into the chair besides Klein's now vacated bed, and held out a hand for the nurse to hand over the report.  
"Do you know where Doctor Sterns is?"  
"I think he's off duty sir. Been ordered to get some rest."  
Bruce nodded. There were three medical doctors to treat over forty people with radiation burns, and General Ross had wanted them to check that the radiation hadn't affected the others in more subtle ways.  
Under the circumstances Bruce found it remarkable that the soldiers and medical staff had been as calm and rational as they were.  
"Do you need anything else sir?" the nurse asked.  
"That's all thanks. Make sure you don't push yourself too hard."  
The nurse smiled.  
"I wish that were an option sir."  
As the nurse left, Banner opened the medical file, looking at the observations within. The pattern was the same - deep and wide-spread radiation burns, greater muscle mass, discoloration of the skin. (Klein had been the most dramatic of the four autopsied in that respect, his skin turning an impossible to ignore shade of green.)  
Major Talbot stood on the far side of the room, locked in tense discussion with Doctor James. Though Bruce found the major uptight and humourless, he didn't envy his responsibility for base security in a time like this. It seemed a tense discussion between equals - there was little sign that the military man was pushing James into any form of compromise. That was positive - right now, the medics were the most important people on the base, their expertise should be respected.  
Banner returned to the autopsy report.  
Looking with eyes slightly refreshed, one word jumped out at him, one he instinctively believed he'd misread - trianoline.  
Banner flexed his eyelids, then read again - he'd been right. A delivery agent, it was used to smooth the injection of various medicines into the body… amongst them hormones.  
Banner scanned his eyes over through the report - the investigating medic had noted, in passing, the presence of puncture wounds in the back of the neck.  
This was it! Proof that someone with access had injected various hormones into the brainstem of Klein (and probably the others as well) causing a brain aneurysm which killed them.  
It wasn't entirely incontrovertible proof, but it was by far the most sensible reason for the presence of trianoline in the body. The substance didn't occur naturally, and wouldn't be needed in any treatment Klein had been through.  
Excited and energised, Banner leapt to his feet, no longer aware of the boils and burns which distorted his body.

At least, he was for a moment – the pain in his thighs was first to reassert itself – he had to brace against the pain. He was too enthusiastic to let that drag him down. The morphine drip moved off its wheels, rocking back and forth until Bruce steadied it.

"Major Talbot! Doctor James!"  
The pair turned to look at Banner, who then waved them toward himself, in a gesture of childlike enthusiasm. His smile was broad enough to lift his cheeks, and return the expression of wonder all who knew him were familiar with.  
Talbot and James seemed reluctant, not moving for a moment or two, before both trudging reluctantly towards him. Both thought him a crackpot (their body language had made that clear), and were focused on what they considered to be more immediate concerns.  
But Banner's breakthrough would finally give them the opportunity to turn the corner, to stop the deaths and cut away the red herrings that were interfering with a solid medical diagnosis.  
"Yes, Doctor Banner?"  
Talbot made no effort to hide his disinterest. There was a trace of contempt for Banner - he was the kind of straightforward, disciplined man who had no time for theories at the best of times, preferring solid, proven methods.  
Of course, this had its positives - he was one of the few men on base not to be frazzled by the current crisis. When many on the base were working with two or three days' stubble, his pencil moustache was as neatly trimmed as ever.  
"I've found out why people are dying. I knew it wasn't directly linked to the radiation, I've found proof they've been injected with enough hormones to kill them."  
Speaking quickly and energetically, even Banner was aware that his enthusiasm seemed out of place when the subject matter was death. But a breakthrough was a breakthrough - the subject of new knowledge always energised him in this way.  
Neither James or Talbot had much faith in him - they remained as stony-faced as ever.  
"There's proof in the autopsy," Banner continued, his energy overflowing to the point where he almost dropped the file. He held it out to James. "They've noticed the presence of trianoline. There's no way that should naturally..."  
Bruce trailed off, his enthusiasm dropping, quickly reaching below zero.  
Not only was James keeping his hands by his side, refusing to take the file, his face was tensing up, into embarrassment. The way he avoided eye contact with Banner, it could even be shame.  
"You knew. You knew about this."  
Banner was shocked even as he spoke, it seemed so unlikely. But James' refusal to even look at the file told him that he knew what was in it. Banner turned toward Talbot.  
"Did you know about this?"  
The anger rose up in the scientist, a sense of moral outrage that overwhelmed all else. His face burned with rage.  
"Doctor, maybe you should calm down. Maybe an increase in morphine would be in order?"  
James, looking toward the floor in embarrassment, nodded slightly.  
"Are you in on this Talbot? Or are you just refusing to contemplate the possibility?"  
Talbot did nothing, save for raising an eyebrow. The difference was small, certainly compared to the scale of the problem.  
"Doctor, it's my responsibility to ensure base security. If you continue to be a disruptive influence -"  
"Disruptive influence? Is that why you ordered those patients be killed?"  
Though Talbot was taller by at least half a foot, Banner moved towards him, unwilling to allow him to remain comfortable with his decision to dismiss his input.  
"Seriously, are you in on this, or just unwilling to think outside your tidy little mind? Perhaps you think if you lock me up, you can move in on Betty?"  
"Bruce, you should calm down."  
He looked at the doctor, who now had a syringe in hand. Banner yanked the morphine tube out of his arm, leaving it to spew the transparent liquid across the floor. Remaining right in Talbot's face, he turned towards James.  
"Where is Doctor Sterns? Did you remove him from duty because he discovered something?"  
"He wasn't removed from duty. He's been unwell -"  
Bruce didn't want to give the pair a chance to dilute his anger. There were half a dozen patients listening, and as many nurses and soldiers - both those already in the ward, and those peering in through the open doorway.  
"Why should I believe you? If you're so willing to break your Hippocratic oath, what else have you done?"  
Bruce felt anger on a scale he wasn't sure he ever had before. He felt as if his voice was echoing, deeper than normal. It sounded louder to him, his voice felt physically much more powerful.  
"Doctor Banner…"  
He turned back towards Talbot, whose face betrayed a sense of shock, breaking through his military discipline.  
"Your eyes... they're green."  
"They're brown."  
Even as he spoke calmly, Banner felt that his voice was echoing.  
"They've changed, and your skin... your skin..."  
Bruce raised an arm - it wasn't just discoloured in the same way some of the other patients had been. In them, shades of green, grey and red were dramatically increased. In himself, it appeared his arm was completely changing colour, and was doing so before his eyes. It was increasing from the type of discoloration that was little different scientifically to a tan, to a full-blown change of natural skin colour.  
Bruce looked up to see that Talbot had signalled for two soldiers to approach. To his left, Doctor James was moving in with a needle.  
With an open-palmed shove, he threw the doctor to the floor, sending him skidding across the clean surface.  
He turned back towards Talbot, who seemed to have shrunk. The height difference between the two men had disappeared - he was now roughly the same size as the major, who, despite clearly being terrified, was standing his ground.  
"Did you know about this?" His voice was absolutely booming. "Did you know what James was doing?"  
Bruce was so enraged, he was struggling to think straight, to remember precisely the question he wanted answering.  
"Before I told you. Did you know before I told you?"  
Out of the corner of his eye he could see soldiers and nurses moving patients out of the ward, clearly afraid of damage that might soon be done. He was too focused on his goal to be offended.  
His clothes felt tight, he felt the button on the top of his trousers pop off, held together by the zip.  
"Doctor Banner, maybe you should calm down, we can - "  
"Did you know?"  
Talbot winced as Bruce yelled; out of the corner of his eye he could see a soldier place a hand to his ears.  
Two soldiers had pistols drawn, both wearing no special armour, nothing besides their normal base uniform. They seemed smaller, Bruce realised he must be increasing in size. That should have been obvious given that the changes were within him - why did he think Talbot was shrinking?

The soldiers were now no farther away than James had been – Talbot stood his ground.  
Bruce paused, until, acting at once, he tore the pistol out of the hand of the farther soldier, and threw a fist towards the face of the nearer. His grab took more hand than pistol, sending the soldier, to the floor, letting out a scream of agony as he held his wrist. The other soldier seemed to have been knocked unconscious by the single blow. With his trousers torn, clinging tightly to his bulky thighs, Banner grabbed hold of Talbot's uniform. The major was at least a foot smaller than him now, and Banner, feeling the newly grown muscles in his upper arms, had no problem lifting him from the floor, his toes dangling just above the tiles of the hospital ward.  
Consumed by anger, he struggled to find anything in his mind which had not been set ablaze by it. He had to work hard to formulate his question.  
"Did you know... about… about the murder?" Talbot didn't respond, trying to hide his fear behind a military mask of stoicism, his effort a noble but clear failure. "TELL ME!"


End file.
